Primary and Secondary Racism

I am old. I really notice the difference the past few years have wrought: still in (relatively) good shape, I am  nevertheless growing weaker. No complaints; this was and is to be expected. However, I did not expect our democracy to grow weaker along with me.

Unfortunately for us and for the world, our current president neither understands nor cares about democracy. How else can one interpret, say, his indifference to the protests to maintain freedoms which are taking place in Hong Kong?

A rational person can have no doubts about the dangers of Trump’s fondness for dictators and autocrats. Similarly, no objective person can doubt that Mr. Trump is a racist. His racism is the subject of this article, in which I introduce a new concept, secondary racism.

1. Primary Racism

This is the classic form of racism, which has plagued our country since its founding—and before—and is still present in a vehement way, albeit in a less vehement way than in the past. Racism was a key ingredient of the milk on which Uncle Sam grew up to be tall and powerful. Only relatively recently has decency taught the decent that prejudice is a sickness; those affected by it must fight for their health; those afflicted by it must fight for their rights.

Not every non-minority member, however, is aware of this disease; some, like a TB patient deliberately and joyfully coughing in a doctor’s face, even flaunt it. Trump is one of these.

His assertion that he ‘hasn’t a racist bone in his body,’ is perhaps the most egregious of the thousands of lies he has told since taking office. Here is a (partial) list of his animus against African Americans, as recounted by the late Nobel-prize winning author, Toni Morrison:

On Election Day, how eagerly had so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated--embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company had been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama had been born in the United States, and also seemed to condone the beating of a Back Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos.The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

(To this sad list I would add his having called for the death  penalty, in a full-page newspaper ad, of five minority kids who were railroaded by the police into confessing a crime they did not commit. When, years later, they were proven innocent by DNA analysis, Trump insisted that they should remain in jail because the police should never be doubted. What could be more racist than that?)

To his obvious racism against blacks, his more recent behavior has given us many examples of prejudice against browns as well. He might not have originated the crisis at the border; he has, however, made it a lot worse.

Examples abound. He has referred to Mexicans as rapists and murderers; he has attempted to build a wall separating the (mostly) white North from the (mostly) brown South. He has referred to those seeking asylum from violence and chaos in their home counties, as an “infestation;” it is no accident that the white supremacist who recently murdered and injured many in El Paso used the same term. Another example of Trump's animus against Latino immigrants is his policy of separating children from parents, which has affected many families. This cruel practice will go down in the history books, I think, along with other shameful deeds such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War ll.

It is hard to think of something more callous than the recent ICE raid in Mississippi, during which hundreds of undocumented Latinos were arrested while many of their children had no one to pick them up from school. Yes, it is hard to think of something to match this cruelty, but, knowing Trump, something worse will probably follow.

No doubt about it, Trump is a racist. But is he a secondary racist as well?

2. Secondary Racism

Before we define secondary racism, let us define the pathology of its primary practitioner.

I have no problem classifying Trump as being mentally ill, suffering from a severe personality disorder. This is not a liberal or conservative issue, or at least, it shouldn’t be. His pathology speaks and tweets for itself everywhere. The president is a classic case of narcissistic personality disorder, so severe that he and he alone has been considered by several clinicians to be a malignant narcissist. I am not a psychiatrist, but I am a physician; I am aware that one is not supposed to diagnose without a clinical examination, but Trump's is such an extreme case that the diagnosis screams out to us merely by observing his behavior.

Trump’s moral world is simple. For him, what is good is that which supports him; what is evil is what opposes him. He has stated that  a good day for him is a day  in which he trounces all opponents and comes out on top. This is one of the chief characteristics of narcissism: extreme egotism.

Another characteristic is a near-total lack of empathy. A good example of this is a photo taken during his trip to console the people of El Paso after the terrorist attack, a trip which turned out to be a debacle. It shows Trump in a photo with an infant whose parents were killed in the massacre. The infant is held by his wife, Melania, far off to the side. Trump beams at the camera, with his thumbs pointing upwards in a gesture of triumph. He shows absolutely no concern for the infant. Contrast this with the clip of Beto O’Rourke hugging a desperate man crying over his loss.

Another characteristic of narcissists is extreme neediness; the narcissist needs constant praise to cover up, at least temporarily, the desperate insecurity of his inner life. During that same visit to El Paso, Trump, instead of consoling victims, bragged about the crowd size at a recent rally.

A narcissist like Trump thinks that he is so special that he can do everything himself. This is why his White House is so chaotic; this is why Trump ignores experts.

What, then, is secondary racism? Secondary racism is selective racism used as a tool to vanquish  enemies. A good example of this is the president's severe criticism of Elijah Cummings, a black politician, who dared to vigorously protest the treatment of children at the border. Trump excoriated Cumming’s record in Baltimore, and, to boot, excoriated the city of Baltimore as well. Yes, Baltimore has its problems, but it has many advantages as well. (I have lived in Baltimore for many years.) It has a high murder rate; St. Louis’s rate, however, is even worse. Note that Trump has never criticized St. Louis, which lies, at least most of the time, in a Republican state. St. Louis has a large black population as well. That Trump singles out Baltimore and a politician who vociferously opposes him and  ignores similar or worse problems in red states, is an example of secondary racism.

Most African Americans oppose Trump; they are well aware of his primary racism. Let us now imagine a thought experiment. Imagine that blacks were as deluded about Trump as  the whites of his base are; let us imagine that he had the support of the black community. If this were so, I have no doubt that Trump’s narcissism would trump his primary racism. That people adulate him is even more important to him than the ethnicity of his adulators.

Trump characterized his undereducated white working-class supporters, before he needed them, as losers. Whoever praises him is good in his wretched book, the color of their skin, if I am correct, is less important. This I call secondary racism, extreme prejudice against any member of the human race  who opposes him.

Trump, whose malicious racism is apparent to every objective person, is mentally ill; perhaps he can’t help what he’s doing. We, however, elected him; in addition, he still has, God help us,  many supporters. What’s wrong with us?

I'm Still Here!

1.

After a brief vacation, I resumed my weekly visits with a hospice patient, Clifton White, who had become my friend. I had been visiting him for months; we had lively conversations.

This time, however, his physical condition had become much worse. Cancer had already ravaged his body, and was beginning to ravage his mind. No longer eating regularly, he slept through much of the day. After the visit, I decided to return the next day, fearing that that visit would be my last.

And so it was. He now had difficulty breathing. His state of consciousness flickered like a desk lamp with a faulty connection. He could still hear me most of the time; I was sure of that.

The time for conversation was over. He had turned on his side; I put my hand on his emaciated hip and sang. Amazing Grace, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, etc. His occasional beatific smile made me realize I couldn’t stop. After an hour or so, I noticed that the death rattle had begun. It was very faint; very gentle, just like Cliff.

I continued to sing, especially Swing Low Sweet Chariot. (Cliff had told me he was a nominal Baptist; I was sure that he knew this gospel song). 

I couldn’t let him die alone. After inviting the angels to come forth and carry him home for the umpteenth time, he opened his eyes a bit, took in a deep breath, exhaled, and was gone.

2.

Clifton White (1953-2019) gave me permission to write “whatever I wanted" about him: He had been born poor in Philadelphia. He had an older brother and five younger sisters; by the time I got to know him, he had lost all contact with his family. He never did drugs, he never got into trouble. If you got to know Cliff, you would know that he was telling the truth.

Cliff was a remarkably kind man. Envy, greed, bitterness—I must say that I never found a trace of these in him during all my visits.

His life certainly had not been easy. One day, when he was a teenager, while walking home form his grandmother’s house, he was shot—an apparent victim of a stray bullet. He was almost killed. He woke up in the hospital with “tubes everywhere.” He had no idea of what happened. His hospital stay was lengthy, but he eventually recovered fully.

The worst event in his life occurred when he was eighteen: his drunken father murdered his mother while Cliff and other siblings were present. Needless to say, this moment was the subject of nightmares for the rest of his life.

He had loved his mother dearly. Even in the nursing home, so many years later, he would look through the window at the sky and talk to his mother, while his favorite song, The Temptations’ 'How Do You Heal the Broken Hearted' played over and over in his mind. His last wish—he wan’t vociferous about it—was to visit his mother’s grave in Philadelphia. It remained unfulfilled.

The most difficult year of his life occurred many years after his mother’s death: he spent the year 2000 homeless in Baltimore. At one point, during the very cold winter of that year, he wanted to die. He was rescued by a social worker who eventually found housing for him. He had never been homeless since. What an easy client he must have been! He never got into trouble; his apartment was always neat and clean.

Cliff was obviously able to keep to himself for long stretches. He apparently never had many friends. This struck me as odd, since he was quite gregarious with me. He earned his money painting houses.

One of Cliff's favorite expressions was "Go with the flow." He was not an assertive person, but this did not limit his happiness. It reminds me of a saying of Cicero: in life we are, as it were, chained to a moving chariot. We have two choices: either fall and be dragged or to run with the chariot as long as we can. This is what Chris meant. I can attest that he ran with the chariot as long as he was able. How many of the dying--or of the living--would assert that they have been completely satisfied with their lot in life? I don't know, but Cliff could certainly be counted among them.

Did he ever get lonely? Yes. On two occasions, he invited a “streetwalker” to stay with him; both times his invitations “ended in disaster.” I didn’t press him for details.

He planned to celebrate his 66th birthday with me, but this was not to be. 

About ten minutes after he died, I informed the nurse. He came into the room, accompanied by two aides who were very somber; one was almost in tears.

Everyone loved him. 

3.

When I began visiting him several months ago, I would occasionally read poetry out loud. Cliff was black, so I thought he might relate well to the poetry of Langston Hughes. (Cliff was smart, but undereducated; he read well, but he was not a reader).

On one occasion I read the following poem to him.

Still Here

been scarred and battered
My hopes the wind done scattered,
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,

Looks like between 'em they done
Tried to make me

Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin',
But I don't care!
I'm still here!

Cliff’s eyes lit up. “That’s me!’ he said, “That’s me!” He was delighted, so much so that I had the poem printed and framed for him. He referred to it frequently. It remained by his bedside till the day of his death.

What an extraordinary person Cliff was! Nothing could keep him down for long—not homelessness, not murder, not even a bullet. Cancer was able to wipe him from the face of the earth, but it failed to wipe the smile off his face till the very end.

4.

I learned a lot from Cliff—and maybe he learned a few things from me as well.

We were different. Cliff never complained;  I must admit, that I had been a glass-half-empty kind of guy. Yes, I had been known to kvetch about difficulties. After all, I hadn’t had it easy, either. (Oh, stop complaining! And I have).

I vaguely remembered having written a poem that contained the phrase that delighted Cliff so: I’m still here. I didn’t think the poem had ever been published; something made me google the poem's title anyway. And there it was. (First published in Wild Violet, an online literary magazine).

The Garden of Ramanatom

I tell them about entropy--March buds ignore me--
Boltzmann's equation nobody believed,
it killed him. Lawns growing verdant new hair--

New strands shall wave at admiring chicks;
the bald spot will vanish by June.

(That's not how it worked with me.)
Each crocus emanating from old roots;
morning glories shall hang from the trellis
like a bunch of resurrecting kids--
Rip van Winkle is a katydid,

an old bug renewed by spring's copy machine;
even if a meadowlark devours him,
his kin will look exactly like him;
no rose would notice the difference.
Like Dorian Gray, I've recaptured youth==

After flitting around blossoms like a bee,
I'll seduce a sensuous woman
who'll find me sexy as Hercules--
I'll still have time and energy for love
after jogging for six hours--

Yeah, right. It's already dusk for this lark;
wings pass the face of a luminous clock
in a darkening sky. Yet I'm still here,
tending my garden. Despite you, I thrive,
entropy! Chervil is old as I feel.


When I wrote this poem, I doubt if I had really believed its upbeat message. No doubts now. 

I see in my mind's eye Cliff's gentle face, the eyes of which convey to me an important message: Go with the flow and never take life for granted again. Good advice. Thank you, Clifton White! May you rest in peace.

Can Cuttlefish Get ALS?

1.
Did you hear about the cuttlefish with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease? No, this is not a joke. This is what the late, great neurologist, Oliver Sacks, heard a colleague say. It set him thinking. The class of cephalopods, (phylum mollusca), is a very intelligent group of animals. 

Maybe it’s possible for an organism as complex as a cuttlefish to be ravaged by ALS, who knows?, Sacks thought to himself. But he had his doubts, so he asked his colleague to repeat what he had said. The latter laughed. He had mentioned a publicist who had recently been stricken with this terrible disease. Sacks was approaching the end of his life when this incident occurred; his ability to hear was no longer acute. (He mentioned this anecdote in his excellent book, The River of Consciousness, which unfortunately was also his last).

Does entropy always win? It does indeed; things fall apart, the center eventually no longer holds.

I read in a recent edition of The New Yorker about a researcher who devised an apparatus which, when worn, would give a young person some idea of what it means to be old. The weight of this unshining armor hinders  movement; the apparatus thus allows a thirty-something to experience what a seventy-something goes through every day, such as having difficulty rising from a seated position, or, among the more fit septuagenarians,  maintaining the downward dog position in yoga for a long time. (Trust me on that one.)

I thought, however, that this old-age suit was incomplete. One would need to stuff cotton in the subject’s ears to give her a good idea of how well—that is, how poorly—old ears hear. In addition, for an average thirty-something to imagine how the average seventy-plus-something sees, the former would need to wear a beaten-up pair of dark glasses. (In my case, alas! I feel sometimes that the dark glasses in question would need to have been dipped in a vat of maple syrup,  then be liberally sprinkled with sugar, and left to dry in an attic for at least a month.)

I’m not asking for sympathy. Visual problems caused by bilateral cataracts and bilateral macular degeneration, however, will not be ameliorated by chomping on carrots. I’m in the process of figuring out what to do, while the vision of my youth approaches the upside-down world of a disoriented bat.

2.

As a man d'un certain age, I reluctantly admit that my hearing isn’t what it used to be, either. A recent example: a few days ago, a neighbor called out to me from across the street. “Semiramide!” he exclaimed. Semiramide? I didn’t know he was an opera fan. Besides, is that the way opera buffs great each other these days? I doubted it. “What?” I replied. “Semiramide! Semiramide!” Rossini’s overture to that piece began to play in my head. I doubted whether I had heard him correctly, however, and expressed my confusion with a shout, WHAT? My neighbor kindly crossed the street and said once more what he had apparently been saying all along: “Happy Father’s Day!”

Mishearing, though, is not, at least as yet, as significant a problem for me as “misseeing.” The latter isn’t even a word! (The word "misreading" indeed exists, but it usually refers to a faulty interpretation of a text, not to an error in decoding the letters of a word). Oliver Sacks gave a good deal of attention to mishearings in his last book, but not a mention of “misseeings.”  My aging brain, typical of many, felt left out.

A great humorist and cartoonist of the past century, James Thurber,  can help set the record straight. (An example of his humor: a rather dismissive critic told him that his cartoon women were unattractive. “Not to my cartoon men!” Thurber replied.)

Decades before the advent of the digital age, Thurber would write his articles on a large, yellow notepad. Unfortunately, his vision was so poor that he was unable to read what he had written. Thurber, thank goodness! frequently managed to find humor in his impediment. (What would an old man be if he couldn’t laugh? Sad).

I remember having read an article of his about the benefits of poor vision. One’s imagination is free to see, at last, whatever it wants to see. Walking down a street while observing the world with the visual acuity of a mole has, according to Thurber, undeniable advantages.

Who are walking down the street? The walrus and the carpenter, trailed by gaggle of jejune oysters! At last, the nearly blind man tells his inner child, you’ll be able to ask a walrus how it feels to have left the confines of a humorous poem for the prose of a (mostly) humorless world! True, as one gets up close, the oysters turn out to be scotomas, as the walrus and the carpenter become the Mutt of a lamppost and the Jeff of a mailbox; no matter: one now sees Bonnie Annie Laurie waving seductively from the distance. One happily moves on.

3.

I now approach a favorite book armed with a strong pair of glasses and a magnifying glass. Misreadings continue, which have taught me something about the brain: it does its best to make sense out of what it reads, and, regarding a word it has difficulty in decoding, it fills in the gaps between letters, and "sees" a familiar word. 

When I read now, I gloss over common words, a method which usually works. But if a more difficult word appears, this system breaks down. For instance, while recently rereading David Copperfiled, I came across the not-too-common word, defalcation. I knew what it meant—that is, if I had been able to decode the letters. My brain probably saw something like de—blur, blur-f--blur blur, followed by ation. How did Dickens know about deforestation, I thought to myself, which was hardly a concern in 1840s London? After much squinting, I finally figured out what Dickens had written.

A final example. Our book club is now reading The Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende.  It is the story of Zarité, a slave who somehow manages to triumph over adversity. In one of the beginning chapters, I came across the following sentence, spoken by a beautiful, sexually experienced mulatto slave to her master, who has decided to marry a Spanish woman and bring her back to his plantation located in what would become Haiti:

“Is it true that Spanish women live in a men’s nightmares with a hole cut in front for making love?”

Weird, I thought, and read on. After a page or two, however, I had to come back to that sentence; I was sure I had misread it, and so I did. With mush squinting I was able to determine what the slave, perhaps somewhat jealous, had actually said:

“Is it true that Spanish women sleep in nuns' nightdresses with a hole cut in front for making love?”

No comment.

Old age, with its inevitable approach to absolute zero, is, however, not all bad. Behind those cloudy glasses beams, as it were, a self-illuminating lens which transports a bright message: perspective. It is hard to imagine oneself as a king of his castle, when much of the castle is already  beyond repair. One learns, hopefully sooner rather than later, the life lesson behind the cogent words of Mr. Rogers: “It’s all about love—or the lack of it.” Once one loves and accepts not only oneself and others as they are, but life as it is as well, serenity follows.

Still, as Bette Davis once said, old age is not for sissies. Increasing aches and pains; decreasing acuities of hearing and vision; the sorrow of leaving behind so many acquaintances and friends whom one will never see again; decreased energy and increased forgetting, etc. etc., are certainly not my idea of a divertissement.

No, this is no country for old men. Or as my brain might misread this sad sentence: this is no chutney for nolled wrens, either. Ha ha.

Some Similarities Between Science and Eastern Thought

                                             In Memoriam: Clifton White (1953-2019)

On May 24, 20019, one of the most prominent physicists of the twentieth century, Murray Gell-Mann, died in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His achievements were numerous. For instance, he, with another physicist, devised a classification of elementary (quantum) particles which he called The Eightfold Way, a nomenclature inspired by the Eightfold Path of Buddhism. As reported in the Times obituary, he didn’t have “a mystical bone in his body” and objected to those who believed in any correlation between modern physics and Eastern teachings.

I do, however, see some consistencies between modern science, particularly physics, with Eastern teaching. That this makes me a mystic I seriously doubt. I leave the subject of levitation, for instance, to those who have feathers between their ears instead of gray and white matter.

I will briefly discuss in this essay five areas of convergence between science and Eastern philosophy, only one of which, I think, is controversial.

1. Anicca, Impermanence

Buddhism, as well as Hinduism, teaches, since time immemorial, that no phenomenal existence lasts forever. It is only recently that Western science is in agreement with this view.The Greeks taught that change occurred only on earth, and everything else, namely the moon and the stars, were immutable and lasted forever. Einstein, after he devised his seminal theories of Special and General Relativities, believed, despite what this own theories indicated, that the universe was eternal. He, in fact, committed what he called the greatest blunder of his lifetime, by theorizing that there was a repulsive force, lambda, that prevented the eternal universe from imploding. (That there is a repulsive force, responsible for the accelerating expansion of space, confirms the universe’s impermanence, not its eternity. Stars will eventually cease to exist; there will be nothing left except so-called "empty space." T.S. Eliot was quite prescient when he wrote, in another context, regarding the end of things: This is the way the world ends/ this is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.)

One can understand why Western ancients concluded that the universe was eternal, since they saw little evidence of cosmic impermanence, limited as they were to the use of their eyes, and not telescopes, as the means of gathering data. Comets and occasional supernovae were thought to be evidence of divine intervention, not mutable phenomena.

Another factor why it was thought that stars never changed is due to the awesome discrepancy between the lifespans of humans and stars. We know now that galaxies began to form shortly—by cosmic standards—after the universe came into existence over thirteen billion years ago. We know now that Shakespeare was more correct than he probably knew when he wrote that “We are the stuff that stars are made of.” Supernovae, the death events of massive stars, ejected heavier elements, formed by the immense pressure of collapse, into space, Some of these elements became the clouds which formed our solar system. Some of these heavier elements, notably carbon, became the stuff of  life on our planet. From birth to death, we carry around this ancient stellar material in our bodies.

Regarding time, the West had been wrong fora very long time. Since the twentieth century, however, science is in complete accord with Eastern teaching in this respect, namely, that everything we know, or know of, including the entire universe, is subject to change; everything, from the oldest galaxy to the youngest child, is born and will eventually die.

2. Anatta, No Abiding Self

This is the second characteristic of existence according to Buddhism; the doctrine that there is no soul has been part of Buddhism since Buddhism began. You are your thoughts; you don’t have thoughts, Science is in complete agreement. Recently, in the New Scientist an article discussed the great “illusion of the self.” Scientists have found areas of the brain that correlate with conscious experiences, such as recognizing colors or even having an 'out-of-the body experience,' yet never an area of the brain that could in any way be considered as the center of the self.

I have come to the conclusion that a sense of self, a.k.a. the soul, whether considered to be mortal or immortal, is a wonderful trick of evolution. Once the nervous system attained a high degree of complexity, it is “natural” that the brain imagined a Wizard behind the Oz of neurons. This had a great biological advantage for the survival of the species. Once one imagined oneself as separate from nature, one could remove oneself temporarily from society and create things, such as tools, weapons, and music. Without this ability to separate in order to think and create, Mozart—and, alas! Hitler, would not have been possible. This sense of self needs to be, and indeed is, extremely strong. I find it amazing that Buddha came to the knowledge of anatta millennia ago, while science has only come to this conclusion recently.

In the motor, as well as the sensory cortex, there is a neurological map of motor and sensory areas called the homunculus, Latin for “little man.” The poor guy is not only upside-down, but downright freaky. The lips, for instance are heavily represented, as well as are the hands. But the little man is as real as the constellation of Orion depicts an actual hunter. There are stars, but no hunter. There are neurons, but no little wizard.

Although, as I mentioned, this ‘trick' of evolution is very deeply seated, the knowledge that there is no such thing as the self defies common sense. (So do the actions of photons, which are nevertheless real entities.) It leads to discussions that get nowhere. For instance, I find debates about the existence of God wastes of time. If self is an illusion, God is doubly non-existent, an illusion of an illusion. First figure out what the self is, that is, a concatenation of thoughts, which will stop such debates before they begin.

If there is no self, free will is an illusion as well. But one can’t live without this illusion. As creatures of evolution, we must live with our "selves” even though we know, upon analysis, that the self is not a real entity, The knowledge of no-self, however, provides balance and keeps one humble, two qualities which are very much lacking today.

The self is a great illusion—here science and Buddhism are in complete agreement.

Dukkha

Dukkha (suffering, or better, insufficiency) is, after anicca and anatta,  the third characteristic of phenomenal existence according to Buddhism. It is here included for completeness’ sake, since it has more to do with inner psychology than scientific objectivity, the concurrence of the later with certain Buddhist principles being the subject of this analysis. 

Evolution has equipped the human individual with sexual desire, as it does with most animals; it also provides humans with imagination and  egoism. Desire in humans, unlike desire in animals which is balanced and in equilibrium with the environment, can know no bounds. Much of human suffering—wars, poverty, defalcations, etc. etc, have their root in unbalanced human desire. Buddhism teaches that egotistical desire—not desire per se—is unsatisfactory and can lead to suffering. Acceptance of life as it is and not how we want it to be is a good antidote to the poison of psychological suffering.  Buddhist doctrines that have psychological meaning and, sometimes, no scientific counterpart or corroboration, include karma, rebirth, and an absolutist sense of causality. These are what scientists call “unfalsifiable” doctrines, which have more in common with religion than with science, and, for obvious reasons, will not be discussed further here.

3. Cosmic Time

As Carl Sagan pointed out, Hinduism (and its derivative, Buddhism) were the only cultures on earth with a sense of cosmic time. Ancient sages did not come to their conclusions through experimentation and scientific proof, but through insight. It remains a truly stellar achievement and is roughly in accord with modern cosmology.

I think the main reason why the East was right and the West for so long was wrong is due to the fact that Eastern ways of looking at the world are characterized by wisdom, the idea that everything is connected, which is much more impersonal than the more human-scale assessment of time, current in the West until fairly recently, and still accepted by creationists.

The comparisons are staggering. Ussher, a 17th century Irish bishop, concluded, through careful analysis of scripture,  that creation occurred in 4004 BCE. The current Jewish year of 5779 commemorates, supposedly, the time elapsed since creation. Compare this with Hindu reckonings in kalpas, each 4.32 billion years, two of which constitute a day of Brahma. We are currently thought to be in the 51^st year of Brahma! According to Buddhism, if you take a mountain, taller than Mt. Everest, and brush it once every hundred years with a silk cloth, the lapse of time it would take to completely wear down the mountain would be less than one kalpa!

These calculations are not meant so much to be accurate, rather than to indicate a near-infinite age of the cosmos, which is in accord with modern calculations. Science dates, with remarkable accuracy the date of the Big Bang to have occurred 13.4 billion years ago. However, the theory of eternal inflation, not provable at this time but quite plausible, posits that universes come into and out of existence eternally. The age of the multiverse, according to this theory, is indeed infinite and an infinite lapse of time is indeed what the Buddhist/Hindu calculations indicate.

These estimates of the age of the universe are fairly new to science. Lord Kelvin in the nineteenth century estimated the age of the sun to be about 400 million years, a  challenge to Darwinism, since evolution demanded that the earth was much older than that. (Die-hard creationists still quote Lord Kelvin, who was unaware of the nuclear source of stellar energy!)

Kelvin was wrong, Buddha was right!

4. No Creator God

Buddhism denies the reality of a creator god. It bears repeating that, since the self is an illusion, the concept of god is nothing more than an illusion of an illusion. Science finds no indication of a creator external to consciousness as well. When Napoleon confronted the scientist Laplace with the comment that god had no place in his worldview, Laplace replied that he had no need for that hypothesis. Among the majority of scientists, nothing has changed since then in this regard. 

Hinduism, at first glance, and due to the devotional nature of a large section of current Hindu practice, seems to permit many gods. But in the highest form of Hinduism, Advaita Hinduism, gods are merely representations of internal realities.

To paraphrase Tina Turner’s hit song, What’s God Got to Do With It? Buddhism, Hinduism and science respond: Very little. Very little indeed.

5. Consciousness

There are other aspects with which Buddhism and science are in accord; even greater accordance is found between Buddhism and wisdom. Just a mention of the three hindrances, greed, hate, and delusion, gives a good indication of what is to be avoided in all situations and in all cultures. This is, of course, the realm of ethics, which is 'beyond' science.

A further agreement, at least a partial one, exists regarding consciousness. The East, especially Hinduism, teaches that consciousness is the key to everything. According to Hinduism, consciousness, not science, is primary. Ramana Maharshi, for instance, taught that consciousness and science equals science; stones, for instance, do not have science!

John Wheeler, the noted physicist, thought that consciousness might indeed be the center of reality. Information (the so-called Its from Bits theory) is, according to Wheeler, the very basis of reality—and there is, of course, no knowledge of information without consciousness—at least as far as we know!

This world-view is best addressed in another article. Suffice it to say here that the ancient East and modern science are in agreement regarding many basic concepts. This is astounding, since the ancient Indians came to their conclusions through insight alone.

Was Murray Gell-Mann aware of this concordance? If he wasn't, an ancient proverb can be paraphrased to characterize his genius: even Gell-Manns nod.

Jussie Smolletts, Us, and The Lying Piper of Queens

Would the fiery pants fit if you said, “Liar, Liar, pants on fire!” to your neighbor? To someone you don’t particularly like? To a politician? Perhaps the fiery pants would fit if you said this burning rhyme to the mirror? Are we becoming—or worse: have we become--a nation of liars? Stragglers, loners, losers—are those who refuse to lie naive, nitwitty, nuts?

I think a good case can be made for the proposition that there has been a marked increase in lying over the past fifty years or so. Wearing metaphorical fiery pants while wearing cool clothes has, I think, become the style. (Take what I write with a pinch of salt, please—I am old, and old people tend to idealize the past. I don’t. think I do, however. I acknowledge that life before the civil rights movement was not much of a life for millions of my fellow citizens. I also acknowledge that Joseph Goebbels was (again metaphorically) alive and well in the America of my birth. Still…)

There is evidence for this trend. Lying is certainly associated with narcissism—for the narcissist, truth is more or less what is subjectively to the narcissist's advantage—and this malady has been demonstrated to be on the increase. Jean Twenge, a psychologist and coauthor of The Narcissism Epidemic reports that millennials are scoring significantly higher on The Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which measures the sad, ongoing journey to selfie from self.

I am therefore confident that writing about the increase of the narcissist's pick-me-up, namely lying,  is not sour grapes from a bitter old man; I’m writing about sour grapes that are being consumed by the present generation as if they were candy. Sugar coated selfy grapes might seem sweet at first, but they are certainly not part of a heart-healthy diet!

I will provide two egregious examples of narcissistic lying. The first is the case of Jussie Smollett. The second is the pants-on-fire guy in the White House.

It seems to be quite likely that Mr. Smollett staged a hate crime in which he played the victim. He likely did this to gain sympathy, specifically. to get a raise—(He was working as an actor on a cable show, and was already extremely well-paid.)

Let us assume he is guilty, which is very likely. How did he react when the mounting evidence indicated that he was lying. He double-downed on his lies. He asserted that he was telling the truth “from day one.” As a “man of faith” he claims that he could not be lying. He wouldn’t be “his mother’s son” if he were not telling the truth.

How can someone lie so shamelessly?

When I was an elementary school student in the 1950s, I remember what was then a familiar story, albeit an apocryphal one: George Washington and the Cherry Tree. The young Washington received a gift of a hatchet from his father when the former was six years old. George used it to take  a few swings at one of his father’s cherry trees. "Who did this," asked his angry father. The future president famously responded “I cannot tell a lie—I did it!" His father embraced him, informing him that telling the truth was worth a thousand cherry trees.

Yes, this anecdote never happened, but that’s not the point. The lesson to be learned was that telling the truth is essential. “Truth is relative, and, by the way, You’re special!” was not part of the 1950s elementary school curriculum.

My wife who emigrated from India in 1972, learned similar lessons at school. She remembers a little anecdote about a guru. A woman wanted her son to stop eating sweets; he wouldn’t listen to her, and continued to eat sweets on the sly. So she brought him to a guru. “Swami, please tell my son to stop eating sweets—it is ruining his health." The swami was silent. The mother couldn’t believe the silence ringing in her ears. At last the guru told her to return with her son in a week. When they returned, the guru lost no time in telling the son not to eat sweets. "Thank you, Swami” the mother replied. “But why were you silent last week?” “I had to give up sweets first. A man of truth must practice what he preaches."

It’s a kid’s story, true, but it contains a lesson kids must learn if they are to become non-narcissistic adults: develop a moral compass that always points to integrity. Tell the truth, even if it puts you at a disadvantage. It’s not all about you!

2.

A German professor once said to our class, “Viele im Kleinen haben gedacht was Hitler im Grossen gedacht hatte.” (Many (in Germany) thought in lower-case what Hitler in upper-case thought.”  I never forgot that sentence. Big Liars can infect us and lead us over the precipice. It happened before.

Perhaps Smollett can be viewed as one of those little liars, a chemical drip precipitated into reality by the pernicious solution concocted by the Big Liar at the top. 

Can you imagine what boy-Trump would have replied to his father? “Daddy, what’s cherry tree? What’s a hatchet?” Pressed further,  he would surely have blamed it on a bad black boy named Obama.

Our current president has reportedly told over two thousand lies since he’s been in office--a dismal precedent. How many people have descended into rodents blissfully following the Pied Piper of Queens? Many, I’m afraid.

Trump is without a doubt a malignant narcissist. Good for him is what serves him; Evil for him is what opposes him—that is, Morality. How long can this go on? Can we afford to wait until it’s raining smolletts? Where will Truth take shelter then?

 Our house is on fire! Where can Truth take shelter now?

Among senators; among members of Congress; among smolletts; beside our President? We are Truth’s ambassadors! We cannot tell a lie! Yeah, right.

The Failed Moccasin Test of Ilhan Omar

I begin with a joke. 

First, a few words about the context in which the joke arose. When Hitler came to power in 1933, he wasted no time in advancing his heinous persecution of Jews. He initiated a boycott of Jewish businesses shortly after he became chancellor; the notorious Nuremberg laws, partially inspired by persecution of blacks in the Jim Crow American South, soon followed. Jews were being fired everywhere in Germany, "Deutschland erwache, Juda verrecke" was the mantra. (Roughly translated as “Awake, Germany, Jewry die!”). The persecution, horrible as it was, was mild compared to what came later. In the early years of Hitler’s Germany, Jews were still permitted to participate in their cultural institutions. (Kristallnacht came five years later, in 1938).

Now we’re ready to tell a very sad joke. Somewhere in Germany, a Jewish man named Daniel saw his friend, Samuel,  reading a newspaper in the park. It turned out to be a copy of der völkische Beobachter, the infamous Nazi daily edited by Alfred Rosenberg, who was executed by the Allies in 1946. “Samuel, why are you reading that Nazi rag?” Samuel replied, “When I read a Jewish newspaper, I get depressed. I read about firings, confiscation of property,etc.; each edition contains articles about the increasing humiliations of our people. When I read the Nazi paper, however, I learn that we control the world!”

Versions of this joke, alas! are still with us. The recent statements of Ilhan Omar, one of only two Muslim women in Congress, are but one example. What is the reason behind America’s support of Israel? “It’s all about Benjamins, baby!”—Money, she believes, has "hypnotized" the American people into support for Israel. She even hinted that Jewish support of Israel among Americans signified primary allegiance to a foreign power. Her comments were correctly judged to be “anti-Semitic tropes,” for which she has apologized.

I wish that was the end of it, but it isn’t. I must admit that I’m getting nervous. I am liberal in my political views; what’s making me uncomfortable is what appears to me to be a rising  unfair criticism of Israel by fellow liberals. There are many examples. A recent Op-ed article in the New York Times informed readers that it’s time to take Israel to task for its treatment of Palestinians. Marc Lamont Hill, a good man, gave a talk at the United Nations that severely criticized Israel. (He ended his talk advocating one country, Palestine, from the Jordan River to the sea. If you’re a supporter of Israel, you know what that means—the end of Israel).

No reasonable person, I think, would give Israel an A for its treatment of Palestinians. Daniel Barenboim, for instance, has spoken eloquently about this issue. He is not, however, advocating for the end of Israel as a Jewish state, which would occur if many critics of Israel got their way.

In my opinion, critics of Israel who do not support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state have failed what I call “The Moccasin Test". They might have walked a mile in Palestinian moccasins, but are apparently unable to walk an inch in Jewish ones. No matter what your political affiliation is, I invite you now to "change moccasins" and walk with me a while.

Judaism is, of course, a major world religion; Jewish culture has had a culturally positive influence way beyond the number of Jews worldwide. (Where would Broadway be without Jews?)

There are about a billion Muslims in the world; there are about a billion Christians as well. Astonishingly, there are only about eighteen million Jews in the world. There are many states with a Muslim or with a Christian majority, but only one Jewish state, Israel. Israel’s area is only a tiny fraction of the areas in which Muslims are the majority.

Not only for cultural reasons, but due to the horrible history of anti-Semitism in the past, it is imperative and fair that there be a Jewish state, both as a source of pride and as a refuge for Jews all over the world. (For instance, if anti-Semitism becomes toxic in a country, the Jewish state will accept Jewish refugees as citizens. (I recently watched on French TV a special on rising anti-Semitism in France; about 20,000 Jews have made the Aliyah journey back to their ancient homeland because they no longer felt safe in France—France has about 800,000 Jews).

Granted, the necessity for a Jewish state entails some restriction on Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. But non-Jews in Israel can attend institutions of higher learning, can serve in the Knesset, and are free to celebrate their religion, etc. (The situation is admittedly far from perfect).

Much of the criticism of Israel, however, is decidedly unfair. Churches and mosques, for instance, are protected in Israel; there is freedom of worship. In contrast, churches, not to mention synagogues, are under siege in many Muslim countries of the Middle East. There was once, for instance, a thriving Jewish community in Iraq—can anyone dare assert that it would be safe for  Jews to live in Iraq or Iran today?

Any impartial person—a disappearing breed—should understand why a Jewish state is a necessity. Walking even a half mile in Jewish moccasins should be enough to convince anyone why this is so.

Politicians must be judged, just like everyone else, that is, by how well they adhere to a form of the Golden Rule. Accepting the necessity of a Jewish state thus does not shield Israel from criticism regarding the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. (There is no Jewish equivalent, however, to form a Jewish version of the caliphate; even the most fanatic settlers have no territorial ambitions beyond Judea and Samaria, the West Bank).

If you comprehend the necessity of a Jewish state, you understand why the widespread Palestinian demand that Palestinians who were expelled from Israel during wars cannot be allowed to return. Israel considers this position to be non-negotiable; rightly so, in my opinion. Obviously, if Muslims became the majority in Israel, the Jewish state would cease to exist. Wars have consequences!

(Note: the notorious BDS or Boycott Israel movement--especially notorious if you're wearing Jewish moccasins, advocates "...promoting the right  of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194").

I fear that many liberals, and many others as well, view Israel as being anti-democratic. If you walk even an inch in Jewish moccasins, you realize that Israel is by far the most democratic nation in the region. Yes, Ilhan Omar has said some “anti-Semitic” tropes, which is bad enough, but the criticism of Israel—as a neo-colonialist state, for instance--is much more insidious and widespread among those without a sense of history.

Unfair criticism of Israel is but one example for the necessity of  periodically “switching moccasins.” It should be common practice, but, in an increasingly polarized world, it isn’t. Will it ever be?

A Poet in Chile (and Argentina)

Note: My wife and I participated in a Go Ahead Tours group excursion to Chile and Argentina from January 3 to January 17, 2019. What follows is my account of this journey. It consists of external and internal observations; mind is like a Möbius strip, a configuration in which the outer and inner aspects are one and the same. In other words, what I see often begins a process of thinking and feeling that sometimes leads to a culmination of that process, a poem. Nine poems are interwoven into this inner/outer travelogue.

We left a day before the tour started. After an uneventful flight to Santiago de Chile, the country’s capital, we took the convenient ground transportation to our hotel, located in a high-end section of the city. The location was good, near a large park; the disadvantage is that most of the points of interest are located about a half-hour’s taxi ride from the hotel. We made a rather bad choice for our first visit, a starred attraction in our guide book: The Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center. We thought it contained a museum, but it only offered a few exhibits of folk art. It is situated by the Catholic University of Chile, an important center of higher education. The cultural center offers many theatrical performances, one of which we were interested in attending, a performance of (Asian) Indian classical music and dance, but the logistics of getting there and back proved to be too difficult. We had a nice lunch, though; vegetarian empanadas. While we ate, we watched teenagers perform what is apparently the latest local dance craze. It consists of very rapid angular movements to popular music. Like line dancing, it is not danced with a partner; it is, as it were, a spot dance, since everyone basically remains in the same spot. It is a street-artsy form of exercise; most of the kids were really good.

We had a much better time the next day when we visited an unstarred attraction in our guidebook: El Museo Chileno de Arte Precolumbino, which contains an exhibit of artworks from Mexico to Patagonia during the long pre-conquistador period. What a different view of the world stared back at us from the many statues we saw! Their expressions seem half human, and half completely other.These beings were thought to control human destiny, to which they seem to be, sometimes, as concerned for human welfare as a supernova. They represent dangerous forces that were sometimes brutally cruel while at the same time assuming the very beautiful forms the prehistoric artists gave them. The only way to survive, it was thought, in a very precarious world where death, illness and suffering were frequent unwelcome guests, was to try to propitiate them.  After a visit to this museum one begins to understand the existential anxiety which propelled the Aztecs’ obsession for human sacrifice.

After lunch, we began a guided tour of the city, a superficial and hurried one, but for tourists like Nirmala and me, who know very little about Chile, enjoyable nevertheless. We climbed the Saint Lucia Hill, the site where Santiago was founded in 1541 by Pedro de Valdivia. The top afforded a nice mirador of the city. We attempted to look at the view with sixteenth-century eyes; however, only the twenty-first century stared back. Santiago is full of high-rise commercial buildings. The “eyes” of the buildings, the glistening office windows, reminded me of some of the indifferent stares of the pre-columbian gods. Scary, but much less scary, since one can look beyond them; they can be ignored.

The next day we were off to Valparaiso, a port city about a hundred kilometers to the west of Santiago. It is smaller and hilly; it has seen better days. Once a thriving port, the creation of the Panama Canal in 1914, obviating the need for a port many kilometers to the south, was a devastating blow.We ascended by funicular to a quaint area that is a Unesco Heritage site. Brightly colored two story-houses were everywhere on the hilly streets; many of the walls covered with interesting murals:

There were also many stray dogs. It reminded me of the many stray dogs we’ve encountered in Chennai, (Madras), India, during our many visit there over the years. On one of the streets in Valparaiso, I witnessed something that impressed me. A homeless woman turned a corner and presented a scrap of food to one of the stray dogs. I got the impression that the dog and the dogged were well acquainted. Her expression, before encountering the dog, was blank. Suddenly she was looking at the dog with an expression of great affection. She was obviously mentally ill; I imagine that she would like human contact, as we all do, but her illness and low status precluded the enjoyment of human society. Her clothes, now quite raggedy and dirty, gave a hint of a well-to-do yet lost social status. I imagined that somehow she had a relationship with a stray dog in India as well; on the bus ride back to Santiago I wrote the following haiku:

One in Chennai, another stray

dog in Valparaiso,

Chile. I’m making friends—at last!

A coincidence: on the way back to the funicular, I saw this:

                                    "I'd rather be a dog"          

It reminded me of what a friend, shocked by human brutality and delighted by canine affection for humans, told me long ago: “The dog is the perfect human being”.  He had a point, maybe; I am still, however, delighted that blind fate has fashioned me into a human being.

Day four of our trip began early; we had to leave around 2 a.m. to catch a flight to Punta Arenas, the southernmost major urban area in Chile. The airport was chaotic; we were traveling during peak season. Our guide, Jorge, however, had everything under control and we reached our destination without difficulty.

Punta Arenas has a population close to 130,000; it began, like Georgia in what was to become the United States, as a penal colony. It is an important base for Chilean access to Antarctica. The wind-swept town reminded me of ones we had visited in Alaska. From our hotel, we could see the Straits of Magellan, which is the many kilometers long connection between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Named after the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the Straits and the connecting oceans moderate the climate of the town: in winter the temperature hovers around freezing, while in the summer, the season during which we visited, the temperature highs are in the 50s.

One of the highlights of our trip occurred here, a visit to the Isla Magdalena Penguin colony. The island is accessible by a small boat. The tourist-friendly hostess told me that I looked sexy in my life jacket. (Pour la première fois de ma vie, I said to myself.  She was, of course, being ironic—Hopefully not too ironic).

As we approached the island, it looked so desolate that I imagined myself as a passenger on the little boat heading for The Isle of The Dead in the famous painting by Arnold Böcklin. The island, however, is very much full of avian life: hundreds of nesting Magellan penguins, along with some nesting cormorants, were everywhere. The penguins were protected from too close contact with the most dangerous species in the world; we circumvented the island, separated from their strange stares by a small fence. It was an unforgettable experience. The Magellan penguins, a mid-sized example of the species, grow to about two and half feet and weigh about 15 lbs or so. Their nesting season begins around September; they lay their eggs in October, which hatch in December. Penguins mate for life; they re-hook up with each other after a year or so of fending for themselves. Both male and female share incubation duties and subsequent shared duties in raising their chicks. They are among the most unmusical birds on the planet. They are able, however, to identify the call of their mates, so each call has to be distinct. It is hard for us to imagine a female being attracted to the cacophonous calls of her mate; one could as easily imagine her falling in love with a foghorn. It reminds me of James Thurber’s response to a critic who asked him why his cartoon women were so unattractive. They’re attractive to my cartoon men, he replied. Nature knows what she’s doing.

The life of penguins is not easy. They make a little burrow where the female lays two eggs. After they hatch, the parents take turns on a journey for food; a journey from which they might not return. In the meantime, the stay-at-home parent stands guard by the nest. The penguins have many predators. Life is very precarious in nature, no doubt about that. I stared into the eyes of many fledglings. Their expressions were different form the ones depicted on statues of pre-columbian gods. There was no cruelty here; also no source of grandeur; no sense of self. The little stones that were their eyes seemed to be there simply to relay to their little brain whether the curious eyes belonging to me posed any threat. Nature is red in tooth and claw, as Tennyson so beautifully put it. All her creatures, however, are perfectly contained in her; it is only we humans who are able to ascend to the angels and descend to the devils. (Is climate change affecting the survival of these birds? Yes, indeed).

Tennyson was right

How irreverent are soles!

What once was an ant suddenly

is not. Tennis shoes aren’t Jains.

If I would step between their hills,

would doodlebugs be grateful? Ha!

Eat what falls into your jaws;

to a green pinhead of God

lift a beetle between fasts,

beautiful praying mantis!

A bug moving across a chyron

cannot grasp the latest carnage;

it crawls on. I brush it aside.

The next day, January 10, we were off on a bus ride to our next  destination. On the way, we stopped at an estancia, a ranch on which sheep are raised. We witnessed a sheep-shearing; it was interesting, but things were hardly as bucolic as depicted in the sheep-shearing festival in the third act of Shakespeare’s Tempest. After the poor thing was sheared, it reminded me of an enlarged photo of a newborn hamster. At least they didn’t kill it!—which, by the way, they more than sometimes do.

A few hours later, we reached Puerto Natalis, a rather unimpressive little town whose claim to fame is its proximity to the Torres del Paine National Park, which we visited in the afternoon.

Visiting the park was another unforgettable experience. Its large area contains many lakes, each a different color depending on the source of the water and the type of algae present. Wildlife was fairly abundant. The central attraction of the park is the towering peaks of Los Cuernos del Paine. Its base is ancient, but the peak is only about 12 million years old, barely out of the toddler stage of a mountain’s lifespan. (The Andes are 80 million years old). The huge granite slabs, carved by glaciers into their present form, reminded me of Titan-sized versions of the stone tablets of the Decalogue.

I stood in awe before them. Standing before this majestic scene, one is aware of what Longinus had in mind when he wrote his famous treatise over two thousand years ago: the only appropriate word for such experiences is, indeed, sublime.

After I “came down” from the heights, I thought, curiously, of Saint Bernard—at least I think it was Saint Bernard. I remember reading about a saint who had to be led across the Alps by an assistant. He kept his eyes closed—he didn’t want the grandeur of the outer world to challenge the grandeur of his inner world, the world of God. Odd. My Möbius mind informed me that the inner and outer must be kept wisely in balance, since they are actually one and the same. Love of the world, properly understood, not only doesn’t distract us from love of fellow human beings, it increases our resolve to do better.

Saint Bernard

He dealt in mirages, metaphors,

imaginary things, miracles;

his mind painted faces on stones.

He ignored what was under his nose,

so he crossed the Alps with his eyes closed.

Otherwise he’d be distracted; otherwise, he’d see.

(Coirón, crabgrass, dandelions,

vetches, clover and a yellow rose)

Wherever we look, whatever we see,

(their spirit full fills me, not his)

inside and outside encompasses all—

(Mind’s eyebrows are cirrus clouds;

mind’s cheeks are giant red stars)—

Why do we suffer? Why are we here?

God passes God nectar and laughs.

The next day consisted mainly of a very long bus ride to El Carafate, a town in Argentina. As we passed the Argentine border, we stopped at a shrine of an Argentine (sort-of) saint, El Gauchito Gil. He was apparently an Argentine Robin Hood, a champion of the common folk, for which he was executed. Miracles allegedly followed, and still follow. Jorge gave each one of us a card with a drawing of Gil on one side, and a request for intercession on the back. Here is the prayer on the back of the glossy, wallet-sized card:

¡OH! GAUCHITO GIL

Te ruego humildemente

se cumpla por intermedio

ante Dios, el milagro

que te pido; y te prometa

que cumpliré mi promessa,

brindándote mi fiel

agradecimiento y

demostación de Fe,

en Dios y en vos,

GAUCHITO GIL

Amén

The offerings at the shrine consisted mainly of  cans of beer, apparently typical offerings for this folksy saint.

I like to watch news in Spanish when I am in Baltimore. The half hour Noticias is followed by a silly telenovela entitled La Rosa de Guadalupe. It depicts young people who get themselves into desperate circumstances—usually, you guessed it, through inappropriate sexual encounters. When all hope is apparently lost, a white rose descends, accompanied by a  tinsely shower and tinsely music. Thus begins the intervention of the diva ex machina, the Virgin of Guadalupe, who will resolve whatever mess the hapless young folk have gotten themselves into, all in time for the final commercial. Why not make an offshoot of this nonsense, a telenovela called La Cerveza de Gauchito Gil? Instead of a rose, cans of beer would fall into the hands of the afflicted. And if Gauchito Gil failed to deliver, at least they’d be able to drown out their sorrows before the final commercial.

OK, let’s get serious. While riding on the bus, I stared at the endless fields of coirón, the pale yellow grass of the Patagonian steppe; breaking the monotony of the grass were many carafate bushes. I was spotting wildlife—guanacos, flamingos, condors and, of course, sheep. I saw in the distance some creature or other and turned to my wife, who, as I discovered, was asleep on the seat beside me. Her mouth was half-open and her eyes, eerily, were slightly open as well. For a moment she seemed to be dead, thus anticipating the most traumatic event of my life, if I’m not lucky enough to go first. (The major theme of poets is said to be love and death, which I have found out to be quite true).

For my dear and mortal wife

I don’t mind dying (O yes you do)

but hers—I couldn’t bear it!

(True)--Why am I soft as a doughnut?

Why is faith thin as a robin egg’s shell?

Not that I envy a  boulder’s palm

whose handshake I’ll feel soon enough.

Pale-yellow grass on an Argentine pampa

I’d be; beneath the surface of Enceladus,

frozen slush I’d be without her—Once

the marriage bed is empty, what cover

shall warm me this side of cremation,

what melts metaphorical snow?

What melts metaphorical snow? Figuring this out is one of the major problems of life, no? Well, Nirmala awoke and I was back in the middle of life. As we rode along, another poem came to me, a Buddhist poem. Contrary to what people think, Buddha didn’t recommend that one should eliminate all desires, just egotistic desire, cravings characterized by the three impediments to wisdom, namely, greed, hate and delusion. It is folly not to accept life as it is; to demand from it more than it is able to give. Even worse is the folly of demanding that we be something which we are not.  This is the subject of the following little poem. (Note “Nothing” refers to “Sunyatta” the void in which pure consciousness abides, the source of wisdom and peace).

“Enough isn’t enough”—this is desire.

I must be enough—desire again.

Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

Enough--the fulfillment of Zen.

A bit tired from the bus trip, we finally arrived at El Carafate. Of the three towns we visited in Patagonia, this one is the most lively, largely due to tourism. We had a good vegetarian meal at a restaurant called Pura Vida.

The next day we visited the largest national park of Argentina, El Parque Nacional de los Glacieres. The park contains two large lakes, Lake Argentino and Lake Lake Viedma. We stopped at Lake Argentino, surrounded by subpolar forests, mountains and inhabited by an abundance of wildlife. A bit later we arrived at the southern face of Lake Argentino, which affords spectacular views of the Perito Moreno Glacier. The height of the glacier is much less than the height of the glaciers we saw in Alaska: it rises only about 200 ft, and, we were told, extends about 500 ft below the surface of the lake. What really impresses is the size of the glacier; seen from above, it extends to the horizon as far as the eye can see,

Suddenly, my mind’s eye saw rows of the terracotta soldiers which compose the posthumous army of the third century B.C.E. Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. Looking down from a balcony from the Xian museum which houses the sculptures, one is impressed by long rows of this clay army, which extends into the distance in much the same way as the glacier, albeit on a much smaller scale. Perhaps the icy irregularities at the top of the glacier reminded me of the soldiers’ helmets. I soon wrote the following haiku:

The Perito Moreno Glacier

Frozen in attention,

white-capped Xian solders—One faints;

distant sounds of thunder

Soon we were on a plane again, this time to Buenas Aires, a fascinating  city, where we spent two nights. After that, many in our group flew back home. Not us: Nirmala and I, along with several others, booked an extension to Iguazú Falls, which proved to be a wise choice. On the two hour flight to Iguazú Falls, which is located near the borders of Brazil and of Paraguay, we experienced some turbulence, which led me to write the following poem:

Turbulence

We gallop through clouds—Suddenly,

Pegasus bucks—We rise, we fall;

no getting off this obstreperous steed

until we reach Iguazú Falls.

Whoa, Bronco, whoa! Coward’s no cowboy;

panic has no reins to quiet giddy hooves—

Buck on. Doubt turned green professes still-

things unseen: Faith still believes in Ground!

Ground did indeed arrive an hour later. We were now in a subtropical time zone; it was humid, it was hot. Shortly after our arrival, we took a little walking tour through some jungle, which proved to be an excellent way to muddy up our shoes.

The Falls, which we visited the following day provided yet another unforgettable experience. Yes, it was sublime, but it was also cosmic: I think that there are few spots on Earth where one comes into such close contact with the raw power of nature. 

We took a little train ride to the beginning of a suspended walkway which led to the falls. The panoramic views from the walkway were nothing short of astounding. As we approached the  falls, we all became Keats’s Cortez, as it were, “silent before a peak in Darien”.

Nature can be very small. For instance, there are about  1 x 10²³

molecules in a teaspoon of water. How many trillions more in the human body, a large proportion of which consists of water! The amount of water molecules in the churning mass before us—a truly unfathomable amount!

I felt as if I had been surrounded by unearthly forces of truly cosmic proportion. The people on the walkway became, as it were, tiny (relatively speaking) stars trying to assert themselves in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a galaxy many light-years away from Earth.

The majestic Falls, however, became the source of the silliest poem I wrote on the journey, a poem of comic exaggeration:

Iguazú Falls

Pace, Lewis Carroll

If seven drunks with seven jugs

swigged for seven years,

ya think they’d ever drink it up?

They would if it were beer

The Falls gave rise to one of my more serious poems as well. At the site of a churning immensity called The Devil’s Throat—we were just a few feet away from the gurgling abyss—our local guide, Chino, informed us that if anyone leaped into the water at this point, there would be no chance of survival. I asked him how often this occurs—A few times a year, he told me.

How sad. Suicide visited my family on one occasion; I know more than a bit about its devastating impact on the living.  As a physician, I also came into contact with several desperate patients during my long career. A healthy life, as mentioned previously, is a balance between the mind and what the mind sees. When one is locked in an inner world full of demons, the psychic pain can be almost unbearable.

The healthy way to transcend the cravings of the ego is through acts of loving kindness and insight into the interconnectedness of all things. I thought of the lines by the Tang-dynasty poet, Li Po: We sit together, the mountain and me,/Until only the mountain remains.

The path of love and wisdom, as everyone of us knows, isn’t easy. Suicide, which is most often impulsive, is the easy—tragically easy-- way to leave the cravings of the ego behind—(No criticism of those who commit suicide implied! Mental illness is a disease, not a fault).

So many words to introduce a haiku I wrote after experiencing The Iguazú Falls!

Suicide, Iguazú Falls

What an easy way to

become one with the entire world!

My way is harder

We have thus come to an end of this inward-outward journey through Chile and Argentina. Comments welcome!

Thanks to Go Ahead Tours for arranging this trip; thanks to Jorge Monferini, our excellent cicerone; thanks goes to our fellow travelers and to all readers of this account as well!

Dorsett is a retired pediatrician and a widely published poet.